Spending rows damage the EU’s credibility

Fights over budget and location do not make the EU look good in the eyes of the public.

European Voice

2/9/11, 9:29 PM CET

Updated 1/22/16, 12:42 PM CET

The arguments between different European Union institutions over their administrative spending are an unedifying spectacle. Self-righteousness and hypocrisy are battling for the upper hand. As ever, it will be the EU’s reputation that comes off worst.

Last week the European Parliament was picking a fight with the Council of Ministers over the latter’s administrative spending in 2009, demanding to verify whether money was indeed used for administrative purposes or for implementing policy (which would not be exempt from the scrutiny of MEPs).

Some of the more belligerent MEPs say that they are ready to scrap an agreement dating from April 1970 that neither party should stick its nose into the domestic business of the other. Would that this threat were acted upon. European Voice has argued before that that agreement should go, along with another, dating from 1988, that fixes the Parliament’s share of administrative spending at 20% of the total. But it will probably survive, because the MEPs stand to lose most.

In another skirmish, Janusz Lewandowski, the European commissioner for financial programming and budget, was this week putting the squeeze on all the other EU institutions. In a pre-emptive strike, he urged them to limit their budgeting for administrative expenditure in 2012. He says that the EU has to send “a positive signal” to taxpayers.

The commissioner is not wrong, but his message risks being taken as an exhortation to cheese-paring. It would be better for the enduring health of the EU if all the institutions seized this moment to look anew at what they do and why they do it, and whether they are providing value for money.

There is an engrained habit in Brussels and Strasbourg to justify spending on the simple grounds that the activity being funded is required by an EU treaty or two. The argument works, but only up to a point. A more convincing approach would be to explain what is being paid for and why the cost is justified, with or without the obligation of the treaties. If the cost is not justified, then no EU institution should defend the indefensible.

Two sensitive examples are instructive. The first is that old chestnut, the Parliament’s shuttling between Strasbourg and Brussels. The treaty requires it, runs the familiar line, and the French government is not about to relinquish the obligation for the Parliament to meet 12 times a year in Strasbourg. The leadership of the Parliament is loath to pick a fight on this one, but a significant number of MEPs are less quiescent. They are right to be restive, because taxpayers are unlikely to be convinced that the cost is justified. The arguments in favour of spreading the EU institutions between Brussels, Strasbourg and Luxembourg have worn thin. Those who want to defend the cost should speak up.

The second issue is that of languages. A growing share of the EU’s administrative costs springs from translation and interpretation – that is, the use of 23 official languages. This is one of the defining characteristics of the EU institutions, but it is expensive, and the costs mount exponentially as the number of languages increases. Because political identity is very often tied up with languages, this is a very sensitive area, but the EU should start talking about the issue, not least because the admission of Croatia to the EU, to be followed by other Serbo-Croat-speaking countries, could trigger a new round of politically correct sub-division of language groups.

Conspiracies of silence are not the answer. If the EU is to command greater respect and loyalty from its citizens, it must be prepared to defend publicly what the EU’s administrative budgets are spent on. If it does not do so, it will be vulnerable to those who want to malign its reputation.